These actions followed pre -established protocols. However, he highlighted the small but not zero risk of rockets that fell to the earth after a launch failure. “The potential of a bad day of rank became real,” Lori Garver, former NASA attached, Posted in x.
Public security is not the only mandate of the FAA Commercial Space Office. It is also rented to “foster, facilitate and promote commercial and resentful spatial releases by the private sector.” According to a FAA website. There is a balance to attack.
Last year, legislators urged FAA to accelerate their launch approvals, mainly because Starship is essential for strategic national objectives. NASA has contracts with Spacex to develop a variant of Starship to land astronauts on the moon, and Starship’s unmatched capacity to deliver more than 100 tons of load to the low -earth orbit is attractive to the Pentagon.
While Musk criticized FAA in 2024, Spacex officials in 2023 took a different toneasking that Congress increase the budget for the FAA Commercial Vplacation Office and for the regulator to double the workforce of the spatial division. This change, Spacex officials argued, would allow FAA to evaluate and approve a rapid number of commercial launch and re -entry applications.
In September, Spacex issued a statement accusing the former FAA administrator, Michael Whitaker, to make inaccurate statements about Spacex to a subcommittee from Congress. In a different publication about X, Musk directly requested Whitaker’s resignation.
You need to give up https://t.co/pg8htftyhb
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 25, 2024
That is exactly what happened. Whitaker, who took over the main work of the FAA in 2023 under the Biden administration, announced in December that he would resign on the day of the inauguration. Since the establishment of the agency in 1958, three FAA administrators have renounced in a similar way when a new administration takes power, but the office has been largely immune to presidential policy in recent decades. Since 1993, FAA administrators have remained in office during all presidential transitions.